Whistleblower News From The Inside — August 26, 2016
By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team
From nightmare drug to Celgene blockbuster, Thalidomide is back — Recently unsealed documents in a lawsuit by a company saleswoman-turned-whistleblower allege that the recent success of Thalomid (which is Thalidomine, renamed) is due to an aggressive campaign to encourage doctors to prescribe it and successor drugs to treat maladies beyond those the FDA authorized. Bloomberg
Three individuals indicted for $2.5M high-yield investment fraud — The indictment alleges that since January 2012, three individuals worked to sell stock in Niyato Industries Inc., a Nevada corporation marketed as a manufacturer of compressed natural gas automobiles that told investors it was planning an imminent stock IPO that would reap pre-IPO investors a tenfold return on their investments. In reality, however, Niyato had no facilities, products, patents or plans for an imminent IPO, but rather was merely a vehicle for inducing investor funds. DOJ
Study finds no evidence of widespread voter fraud — Donald Trump has repeatedly alluded to fraud as a reason to introduce controversial voter ID laws, but a new study of 2,068 alleged election-fraud cases in 50 states between 2000 and 2012 found the level of fraud was infinitesimal compared with the 146 million voters registered over the 12-year period. NBC
Confronting tax fraud, Denmark will hire tax inspectors instead of firing them — Denmark will spend more than $1 billion to upgrade its tax inspection system, 10 years after it began sacking thousands of people who worked for the inspection office. In the past three years alone, Denmark figures it has lost 12.3 billion Danish crowns ($1.87 billion) in tax fraud. Reuters
Fraud trial delayed for Florida doctor linked to Sen. Menendez corruption case — The trial on health care fraud charges has been delayed until spring for a prominent Florida eye doctor also linked to a corruption case against New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez. Prosecutors claim the doctor misdiagnosed patients in a decade-long scheme to bilk Medicare out of up to $190 million, which allegedly involved use of multiple doses from single-use vials of a drug used to treat age-related eye degeneration. AP